Monday, September 2, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

 

It is the 2nd of September 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

A very happy Monday to you—a happy Labor Day (in the United States). You can thank Grover Cleveland's troubled conscience. After using troops to break up a rail strike, he signed a bill making today a federal holiday for us working folk.

You might know that much of the world celebrates Labor Day on May 1st, but we have our late summer date to distance ourselves from the radical workers' movements. The Catholic Church recognizes Labor Day and the feast of St. Joseph as the patron saint of workers.

When it came to elevating “everyday work,” few names are as synonymous with this in Scandinavia as the ubiquitous Grundtvig.

“Who?” You ask?

It is remarkable that we are still just getting English translations of some of his work—perhaps the most significant single character in 19th-century church and state not only in his native Denmark but throughout Scandinavia, and his “folk schools” now dot the globe.  

So, who was this NFS (Nikolai Frederick Severin) Grundtvig? He was a pastor, a poet and translator, an author, and a folklorist. He was a contemporary (slightly older) of Hans Christian Andersen and Soren Kierkegaard, but while those two men were melancholic and socially awkward, Grundtvig was outgoing and passionate about his beliefs, whether those related to Nordic folklore or his Lutheran faith.

Grundtvig was born in 1783 in Denmark to Johan and “Mrs” Grundtvig (we don’t have her name). Johan was a pastor in the Lutheran church, and young Frederick (as he was known to those close to him) took a degree in theology after receiving a classical education at his parents' behest.

But it was the lectures of Schelling, the great German Romantic, which made their way to Grundtvig through his cousin, that Frederik had his first of two “conversions.” This was to romanticism and the national literature of Scandinavia. Before he made his mark as a pastor and critic of the national church, he was a critic of the Scandinavian educational system- he believed that the European obsession with the Latin and Greek classics robbed his people of their own national myths and poems. He would translate, write, and popularize Scandinavian folklore.

Moreover, he believed the educational system to be elitist. He believed that all people should be able to get an education, not just in intellectual but practical fields as well. His school system, or “Folk Schools,” would become the most recognizable “Grundtvigian” contribution to the Nordic world and beyond.

But his second “conversion” to a robust and living faith tied his folk schools and the elevation of practical work to his newfound appreciation of his country's Lutheran heritage. He called for a revival of what he believed to be a warm Lutheran heritage that had given way to a stale state church.

He would serve under his father and, in 1810, gave a test sermon that set the national church ablaze. Titled “Wherefore hath the Word of the Lord vanished from His House?” It is a stinging indictment of the state church (a la Kierkegaard) and the staid formalism of the institutional church.

He believed that an encounter with the “Living Word,” which may occur in his preferred sacramental church, frees individuals to arrange their churches as they see fit. Unlike his Norwegian contemporary, Hans Nielsen Hauge, Grundtvig was not a pietist (his faith was far more sacramental). He shared a distaste for hierarchy and found himself constantly in the crosshairs. At one point, he was banned from preaching for seven years; during this term, he published sermons and hymns and traveled to England to work on the great English epic Beowulf.

Near the end of his life, he was recognized for his contributions in the church as well as the state. He was a leader in the (rather remarkable) transition in Denmark from a monarchy to a liberal constitution with freedom of speech. Aarhus University Press has recently published translations of his theological works, hymns, educational theory, and politics.

NFS Grundtvig lived a long life, famously fathering his sixth child at the age of 76. Born in 1783, Grundtvig died on September 2nd, 1872, when Nikolai Frederick Severin Grundtvig was 88 years old.

 

The last word for today is from Grundtvig- if your hymnal has any of his hymns, it is most likely the English translation of "Built on the Rock":

Built on the Rock, the church shall stand

even when steeples are falling;

Christ build His church in every land;

bells still are chiming and calling,

calling the young and old to rest,

calling the souls of those distressed,

longing for life everlasting.

 

Not in a temple made with hands

God the Almighty is dwelling;

high in the heav'ns His temple stands,

all earthly temples excelling;

yet He who dwells in heav'n above

chooses to live with us in love,

making our body His temple.

 

Through all the passing years, O Lord,

grant that, when church bells are ringing,

many may come to hear God's Word

where He this promise is bringing:

"I know My own, My own know Me;

you, not the world, My face shall see;

My peace I leave with you. Amen."

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 2nd of September 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by the hardest Laboring man in Random Lake, Wisconsin- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who just got another text from his father-in-law about how USC is going to win… I suppose by now, we know what happened. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.